You know I said I was done with the Vanilla Server ‘issue’? Well, my subconscious has decided I’m not. Last night I dreamt about clearing out history, throwing away broken and old items, and selling things from the past as some kind of retro nod to the present. I had a shop full of other people’s memories, and watched people change them before my eyes: old dresses ripped apart and remade, furniture broken and rebuilt. From the ashes of someone else’s history came the momentum for the future. Here’s where the whole ridiculousness of this situation with Vanilla Warcraft comes in: if I really thought players wanted to go back to live in that era and would be happy just as it is?

Part of me could accommodate the change. Those who say they’re unhappy with the alterations that Blizzard have wrought and who want to live in aspic forever, like a social experiment trapped in the haze of good memory and happy reassurance that the reason why Warcraft now is crap is because the company had to go and change it. There’s a reason that happened too guys, and it has absolutely nothing to do with driving you away in droves, and everything to do with this Company having a different long term objective than you hold as dear.

007’s salty as fuck and is quietly reconsidering his position.

It doesn’t matter how many important people come out in support of your ‘request’, this isn’t the same company who made that game back in 2004. Sure, they’ll jump on the bandwagon of nostalgia when it suits their own ends, but to expect them to accommodate you when they’re already fundamentally altering the Lore and looking ahead and not backwards? There’s also a crucial other point that’s just not being talked about right now and should be: so, you get Blizzard to legitimise you. What happens when people get bored with the same world and begin to drift away?

What happens then? I’ve seen people tell me that they’d play maybe once in the old style but after that they’re going to lose interest too and if that’s not where Blizzard are channelling development? You really think that an ‘AU’ Azeroth will work, and that you could do the job better than Blizzard did because at least this time you’d know what NOT to do?

I hate to break it to you, but life doesn’t work like that.

You started this.

You guys started this. Those of you out there who complained about Blizzard’s methods and approach and now are playing Vanilla because you don’t like what’s changed. If you hadn’t complained back when you did? If you’d not been the architects of doom and gloom? That’s why the expression ‘be careful what you wish for’ actually exists, because it grasps the implicit understanding that when you make a change, there are consequences. It is the most ridiculous of ironies that having made all these things change, this is where we now sit, in a World that nobody says they asked for and yet everyone embraced with open arms at Warlords launch.

10 million people bought the game, and although Blizzard have to take some of the blame for the exodus that followed, it appears that actually, the player base also have their own responsibility to shoulder. If you choose not to stay and go back to a previous version of the saved game, and then complain Blizzard won’t let you do what YOU want with it?

Have you any idea how fucking entitled that sounds right now?

Shoo.

The most significant turning point in this whole sorry affair, at least for me, was the moment last year when Blizzard caved on allowing flying in Draenor. That shows a group of people that if they complained long and hard enough, the Company would realise the error of their ways and simply concede to demand. Now there is a storm coming, where it is acceptable to diss the company whose code you’re using outside the Terms of Service despite the fact that’s just such a massive insult to begin with. It’s asking a company to accept you refuse to move on with your life and their concept and need to remain in a place where gaming is strictly on your terms. It is, without doubt, a spectacular display of arrogance from a portion of the player base who have probably as many demons to face as those who think it’s acceptable to shit on people from a great height for not being hardcore raiders.

Mostly, it is the sad and indicative state of gaming generally, where there’s always some entitled arsehole willing and capable of spoiling it for everybody else. If you didn’t know already, I have no sympathy for people who feel this form of gaming has any legitimacy. I don’t hate you individually, and I certainly won’t be making sock Twitter accounts to anonymously abuse you for your life choices. However, I’d ask you to consider what you’re asking, and why if I was making this game, I’d consider this an unbelievable act of abuse.

One thought on “You’re History”

I 99.9% agree with this. The flying thing – making thee post-end game content lull a little less taxing and letting you hop around hovering up little bits of content you missed or making grinds a little less grindy before the next expac comes out is a good thing.

So the change of heart on that was sensible – but I agree that how it came about was not good at all.